meridian_rose

I'm going to jump forward a bit to Challenge #8: – Talk about a current fannish project

I'm working on my small fandom big bang piece for smallfandombang with a mininum 10k wordcount. Rough draft is due end of the month. I'm almost done with the first draft and it's going to be about 20k.
The fandom is Jungle Cruise (movie) which I'm surprised has so little fic on AO3 and aside from a couple of gifs and art on Tumblr has almost no fandom.

screencap of a tumblr post with art and caption comparing Jungle Cruise and The Mummy

I found it very similar in style to The Mummy movies which are still popular though I admit never so popular as to exclude them from Small Fandom fests and exchanges. I really fell in love with this and fell into a bit of Jack Whitehall fangirl spiral and I blame Clifford the Big Red Dog for priming me in advance of this movie
I should get matched with an artist for some art or other non-fic medium piece. I doubt I can find a beta but I'm pretty pleased with how well using Balabolka text-to-speech helps me find errors and check pacing. The first draft will require quite a lot of editing.

I mean, I had to rein in the outline to tighten things up when I realised how far I was behind on writing but that's not a bad thing. I did have to rejig a couple things because despite having the rough outline and initial scenes broken down in Scrivener (and I highly recommend the "paste your notes into each scene to avoid blank page terror" advice) things needed some work as I actually started to write, beginning at the prologue and start, but then jumping around to write particular scenes I had planned more thoroughly than others which then led to necessary changes to the overall structure.
Then I did some research and dithered and did some more research and then made stuff up but also did more research because of a need to touch on or specify some 1918 geography/travel and mythical creatures/spirits plus etymology online got used a lot to see which phrases were in use or not.
(I can't share any quotes/bits I'm proud of while it is a WiP as that's against the rules of the community)

I'm pretty pleased overall I think though I've gone back and forth with "what was I thinking" a couple of times! It's strong on friendship and family dynamics, but has some dark themes; angst, depression, spiritual possession, period typical homophobia, and some suicidal ideation. It does of course have a happy ending because hurt/comfort/angst with happy ending is a large part of what I write!

IDEK where the year went.
However Christmas is nearly here and then the lull before New Year and snowflake_challenge will be back! I hope to actually participate this time.


If you've never seen the challenge it is

An annual event to highlight the best parts of Fandom and the people who make it that way. It's a celebration about all of us and all the creative things we do, all the ways we touch each other and make a difference.
Everyone is welcome, creator or consumer or someone in-between, inhabitants of Tumblr, LiveJournal, AO3, Dreamwidth, dA, FanFiction.net, Mibba, Bluesky, Mastodon, mailing lists, or whatever platform or media you use.

The challenge runs officially from January 1 to January 31. There are challenges being posted every other day during this time but there is no deadline to complete any challenge.

You can see the previous masterpost from 2023 for an idea of the kind of things to expect, though every year the mods try to feature new challenges as well as revisiting old faves.

There's a fun pre-2024 poll you can fill in with loads of ticky boxes here.

Click the image to go to the community. You can read about the challenge at the introduction post
Challenge #3

Pimp Your Favorite Communities, Fests or Challenges! Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Is it cheating to say I did this last year for snowflake and these are still some of my faves?

With the addition of DW landcomm lands_of_magic, writing comm. ushobwri (must be a member to see posts), and from last year sunshine_challenge a mid-year sister comm to snowflake challenge. eta: tellshannon's entry reminded me of 100fandoms; I've only done about ten so far but it's a fun challenge. I've still got a handful of LJ's 100tales to do and so, one year later, I still haven't begun the DW 100prompts!

You can read about the challenge at the introduction post

Challenge #1

In your own space, introduce yourself! Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Hi all! I updated my sticky post post a bit late last year to reflect some of my newer fandoms and because someone pointed out to me that the date on it was early 2020, which had seemed a long way off when I first wrote it! I may edit it a bit more now I've been writing this post and thinking further about introductions.

I've got a long list of fandoms.
I also made a list of movies I watched in 2019
And a TV and book list

I post original work to my writer blogs on Wednesdays and those posts get copied here, sometimes as a round-up later in the week or as a monthly post/links to the original social media posts. My writer website with WiP outlines and links is here.

I'm doing Get Your Words Out again this year, 150k is once again my goal. I was behind a bit last year but not by as much as the previous year.

I learnt and developed how I write a bit more during 2019 but maybe that's something for a later challenge or a longer post :)

On my blog you'll find mostly fanfic, original fic and poetry, ramblings about media and fandom, and occasional meta, and some real life posts including my monthly BAG post (where I've Been, at At, am Going) with some occasional photos, plus posts for the Wheel of the Year. Sometimes I'll write about myself and social issues often through a fandom lens; asexuality, being childfree, etc.
I do a round-up post at the end of the month with links to all my posts for the month here and at the writer blogs, and an update on my GYWO total.

Day 14 - In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom. What are your hopes and dreams for fandom?

You could probably have a made that said something like "After the increasing toxicity and low interaction values of Tumblr, a return to more thoughtful and positive interaction at DW" and most of those doing today's challenge would co-sign as a hope for the future, and point to the recent uptick in activity as a hopeful sign.
So that's me, and most of the other posts I've read so far. Love your DW. Love interacting with people. Love the privacy settings. Love that everything doesn't have to be "Safe for Work" and/or "unproblematic". Love that people aren't reblogging your fic posts with hateful rhetoric about how This Ship Is Bad and adding threats/harassment to it. Love seeing content people share. Love meeting new friends and finding out about their lives and their pets and their crafts and hobbies. Love coming away feeling connected rather than more distant.

I've done a lot of posting and linking to my previous 'dreamwidth' tagged posts here (I'll tag this post with it to make it easier to find) and at Tumblr to try and encourage people here/back here. I know I let things slide because lack of audience got disheartening and last year was hard, but I've always been here even if not posting so much, and I'm going to do better this year. Post more. Comment more. Signal boost more.

I never posted much to Tumblr alone aside from a few quiz/meme things, fic etc being posted/promoted here. There are a few things however and I'll try to decided which I want to bring here. Sometimes it's more reblogs with my thoughts/comments, sometimes a graphic. Even my meridianrosewrites side tumblr, solely for promoting work I've posted to AO3 along with any art for it, has its index pages for tags and links here at meridianrosewrites because DW is 100% easier to edit regularly with new links than Tumblr's interface.

So for me, I want DW to be my major hub again, and I'd love that to be true for more people!

Day 12 - In your own space, create your own challenge.

Echoing what some others have said, and what day 7 was about: try something new!
If you've never participated in a bingo or icon challenge or exchange then give it a go! If you've never listened to a podcast or watched a fanvid then why not try at least one or two?
If you want to try a new fandom or pairing, go for it! If you never write gen, challenge yourself! If you don't usually leave comments then try doing so for the next five (or ten) fanworks you enjoy and start building the habit. Comment to someone you haven't interacted with before :)

Day 10

Create a fanwork. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
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In your own space, post self-recs for at least three fanworks that you created. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I did a few for this question last year of some of my favourites. This time I'll pick things I completed last year. 2018 was a rough year and I didn't write much, though I did finally achieve 100k for Get Your Words Out. So there aren't as many fanworks to pick from!

Four fics + bonus 2017 rec below the cut!
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In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts.

What I wrote that last year: Can we please do as most people asked on their fannish wishlist for day 4 and leave more comments? Can we journal more and create more? Can we rediscover the joy of fandom and stop with the "anti" behaviour? Please.

This year I have to say I've loved seeing more people come to/return to DW in light of the Tumblr purge. I did also find some communities actively standing up against anti behaviour and writing thoughtful meta about fiction, including at least one that's now at DW fiction_is_not_reality which helped me feel less alone. I've been spending less and less time at Tumblr and now more time here and I can honestly say I come away from DW far happier than I do from reading Tumblr. More community, more nuance, more focus on creating and supporting than "liking" and harassment. So yes, more of that!

Fanart is always welcome too of course!

Cheating because this isn't strictly fannish, but I always welcome more followers for my professional writing blogs, and I wouldn't have got this far writing original work and posting it without have the fanfic, LJ, and DW communities to encourage and support me. At the blogs I post fic snippets, flash fiction, poetry, writing prompts and more; I do write twists and modern takes on fairy tales and mythology, which straddles the border between original work and fanfiction!



My website has a WiP page for current novels in progress.

Thanks so much for running this again mods! I'm sorry I couldn't help out this year but you've got a crack team up and running things smoothly :D

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